My Work-at-Home Mom Story- Part 1: Before Kids

I didn’t set out to become a work-at-home mom. It wasn’t my dream, it wasn’t even something I had considered before marriage or before kids.

When Greg and I got married, having kids was part of the deal, and so was homeschooling them. (yes, we agreed to homeschool before we had kids, before we were even married, but that’s another story.)

But working and homeschooling, nope. Not part of the deal.

Yet, since July 1997, when K was just 6 weeks old, I’ve been a working mom. And in 2000, when K’s little mind demanded more, I became a working, homeschool mom, and have been ever since.

But what that has looked like has changed over the years.

I didn’t just start off doing what I’m doing now. It’s been a process – a learning process, a growing process, and a process of exploring opportunties I never dreamed existed or would exist.

I grew up in a family business. When I was sick, I went to work with mom and dad. When mom was sick, she brought work home. Dad always brought work home.

I grew up in a house with it’s own computer, before PCs were even available. It was an IBM System 32, took 12 inch disks, and was bigger than my freezer is today. We called it “Igor”. Mom used it when she needed to work from home.

When “portable” computers were available, my dad bought one – and sometimes took it camping with us. I still remember him at the state park’s ranger station, plugged in with this computer (it was bigger than most roll-aboard suitcases are today), working, while my brother and I played.

I bring this up, because now that I think about it, the idea of working from home was long ago planted as something doable. It wasn’t modeled for me, like I model it for my kids, but yet it was.

Living life and working from home were intermingled in my life from the beginning, and so the life I lead now, shouldn’t be surprising, I suppose.

When I was single and working, I’d take on extra jobs transcribing software code or transcribing audio recordings (from cassette tapes). It was before email or the Internet, so everything was sent via snail mail and on paper or disk/cassette.

When we worked at the software company where we met, Greg and I and several of our co-workers would meet for lunch periodically and talk about how one day we’d all be able to work from anywhere in the world, dial into one computer system, and pass through to help our clients anywhere in the world. It was a glimpse of the future.

We were already dialing into our clients computer systems from the office (on really really slow modems), and supporting them with phone calls and faxes. We could see then that around the corner, the next step, working anywhere in the world. And boy, that was the vision.

And one that has been a reality and sustained me for most of K’s life. Who would know that that very dream we discussed so many years ago, would be the very thing that has allowed me to be home with the kids and homeschool them. Certainly not me.

Over the next few weeks, months, I’ll be sharing how it is that I came to be a work-at-home mom, the different work-at-home opportunities I’ve tried, and the resources I’ve found useful – and the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Come along if you will, and if you may, maybe sharing this story will help make your journey a little easier or give you some encouragement for your journey.